What is RoboCup?
RoboCup is an international joint project to promote artificial intelligence (AI), mobile robotics, and related field. It is an attempt to foster AI and robotics research by providing a standard problem where wide range of technologies can be integrated and examined. RoboCup chose to use soccer game as a central topic of research, aiming at innovations to be applied for socially significant problems and industries. The ultimate goal of the RoboCup project is By 2050, develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world champion team in soccer.
In RoboCup Simulation League two teams of 11 players play against each other. The players are software agents interacting on a virtual soccer field (Soccer Server). The simulation basically complies with the FIFA soccer rules and the physical abilities of human players (e.g. limited view-cone and stamina, uncertainty in sensing and action, ...). Unlike modern computer games all the players are acting fully autonomous, i.e. without any external control. The scientific challenge for simulation league teams is most of all solving the cooperation problem. The particular agents have a social goal (winning), what can only be reached by cooperative distribution of all the single tasks in the team.
Video of the 2D simulation final at RoboCup 2007 in Atlanta:
Video of the 3D simulation final at RoboCup 2007 in Atlanta:
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